If Pete Buttigieg isn’t going to run for president, he’s doing a really bad job hiding it. Buttigieg is out on the campaign trail, boosting his favored candidates, which is standard fare for any presidential wannabe at this stage of the game. What is different is that Buttigieg is spending a lot of his time and energy pushing candidates at the state legislature level. Buttigieg has started with his home state of Indiana, but apparently has a list of endorsements in other states in the works.
Buttigieg sees the success that Republicans have had in wielding their power at the state level and wants Democrats to copy it. “This is an area where Democrats should learn from Republicans who spent many years patiently and cleverly building up power all the way up from the school board level,” he told Politico.
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Buttigieg is correct that the GOP has used its control in state legislatures to pursue its agenda, including multiple anti-trans measures and partisan (and racist) gerrymandering blessed by the Supreme Court. The state legislature is also the training ground for ambitious politicians seeking to move up to the federal level. Nearly half of the current members of Congress are former state legislators. For a party whose leadership is famously geriatric, Democrats need to start grooming new talent, and state legislatures are a good place to start.
Of course, Buttigieg isn’t entirely altruistic. Having some favors to call in when his presidential campaign gets underway is a side benefit to his effort.
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Still, there’s no question that Democrats have underinvested in state legislative races. Right now, Republicans control 28 state legislatures to the Democrats’ 18. (Three state legislatures are split between the parties, while Alaska’s has a multipartisan coalition.)
Pragmatically speaking, Buttigieg isn’t about to spearhead a movement that makes the Indiana state legislature Democratic. The political reality is that many states lean toward one party, and it takes a long time to change that, if ever.
But that doesn’t mean investing in state legislative races is a waste of money. The goal isn’t to turn a deep red state like Idaho into a bright blue one. The goal is to maximize Democratic advantages where possible and mitigate Republican power as much as possible.
Right now, at least, Democrats have a good chance of doing both. The party has favorable odds for flipping control of one or both houses of several state legislatures. Democrats could also break supermajority control in several other states such as Kansas and Missouri, where Republicans have veto-proof majorities. In turn, Democrats could win supermajority status in several other states, including Colorado.
“For the most part, the Republicans are kind of playing defense more than offense,” Katy Owens Hubler, director of elections and redistricting at the National Conference of State Legislatures, told Stateline.
Democrats are returning to the 50-state strategy, where the national party invests in every state party. The first big proponent was Howard Dean, the former Vermont governor, who was head of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) 20 years ago. Dean wanted to boost the party infrastructure across the board, even in red states, to help with candidate recruitment. A lot of Beltway types, including those who went on to serve in the Obama administration, were dead set against the strategy, and it fizzled once Dean left the DNC in 2009.
Fast forward two decades. In May of 2025, the DNC, now headed by Ken Martin, announces that the party will be sending monthly allowances to every state party in an effort to–you guessed it–build up the party infrastructure and recruit candidates. Martin is still pushing ahead with this effort, but many party insiders are gunning for him for the way he’s running the organization and his poor handling of finances.
Buttigieg–who was himself a candidate to run the DNC in 2017–is pursuing the strategy on his own. How much impact one politician can have is likely limited. But with a blue wave looking increasingly likely, the bet may pay off for Buttigieg specifically and Democrats more generally. It will also be a hint at what Buttigieg’s presidential campaign would look like: don’t write any state off entirely.
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